


Model Behavior

by AHumanFemale



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: M/M, Sonny is a Model, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 11:37:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11554398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AHumanFemale/pseuds/AHumanFemale
Summary: Rafael finds a photo album in his new husband's things that he's never seen before.  Looks like Sonny's still got some secrets.





	1. The Album

**Author's Note:**

> Previously seen on Tumblr. Thanks to Larkin21 for the prompts to continue this little venture. And thanks to all of you guys for reading. <3

 

 

The leather photo album was heavy and still creaked like brand new, leading Rafael to suspect that it had never been opened.  

He was unpacking yet another box of Sonny’s things.  He said “another” because this was probably the fortieth this weekend.  A normal relationship might have had this in small stages throughout the months leading to cohabitation but not theirs.  Sonny had decided to play the Catholic card and refuse to live with him until they were married.  He didn’t want to “live in sin,” as though his God were perfectly fine with ambitious amounts of premarital sex so long as they didn’t have the same mailing address.

Rafael took the time to admire the slim gold band on his finger before turning his attention back to the album in his hands.

He cracked it open and his jaw dropped.

It was his husband, painfully young. 

Crossed arms, dark hair, and a suit that was clearly picked out by someone else.  Even with substantial improvement and Rafael’s knowing influence, Sonny would never have put those pieces together.  Rafael’s eyes were drawn to his direct gaze and obscenely full bottom lip, unconsciously catching his own between his teeth.  He’d kissed those lips more times than he could count but seeing them flushed dark in moody black and white made him wish Sonny was home instead of booking johns at the precinct.

Rafael set the rest of the box aside and took the album with him to the couch, lowering himself on one end so that the arm could support the book’s weight while he admired the subject material.  

The picture was clearly professional; lighting perfect, angle flattering.  Staged and posed to ensure a dramatic presentation rather than something utilitarian, like a headshot.  Faded white paint on brick and dilapidated control panels served to contrast the clean lines of the suit but still managed to amicably mingle with Sonny’s shaggy hair.  On the bottom right of the photo there were a few lines of script so small they were nearly illegible.  Rafael had to squint a little to read them, irritated that his brain so helpfully suggested  _reading glasses,_ of all things.  

_Dominick Carisi wearing Burberry._

Rafael looked up in surprise, as though Sonny were going to pop out of the curtains and admit to staging an elaborate April Fool’s day prank.  A prank that would have been three months late.  Surely in three years of dating, one year of engagement, and a month of marriage Sonny would have mentioned this to him.  Still, the evidence in front of him spoke for itself.

His husband, a man with a sordid history of boring ties and dreadful facial hair, was once a model.  

Rafael turned the page.


	2. The Chameleon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael muses on Sonny's ability to blend in.

 

Rafael sifted through the photos at a leisurely pace, admiring lighting and dress just as much as this previously unseen version of his husband.  Sonny had the remarkable ability to shift and blend to fit his surroundings.  Different lives, different stories told with a look or the set of his mouth.  Fashionable twenty-something in some nondescript urban area to a grungy artist, clad in threadbare t-shirts under woven cashmere sweaters.  

This shouldn’t have surprised Rafael, not after watching him elicit confessions and go undercover more times than Rafael would ever be comfortable with.  Here, though, it wasn’t a cause for concern.  He didn’t have to worry if Sonny would blend in enough.  There wasn’t a concern for his life.  Here he could watch Sonny transform in and out of personalities and be in awe instead of in fear.

Rafael paused a little longer at this particular image, his mouth curling into a smile at the petulant glare staring out from the page.  Sonny couldn’t have been more than twenty-five in this one, which put him two years out of college and one year before the academy.  He’d never shared much about this part of his life but Rafael had always assumed it was because there wasn’t much to share.  College, working, trying to figure out what came next.  Rafael had his own few years of indecision and nothing about those years were particularly interesting.

None of them had resulted in images of himself frozen in time, with messy hair and his feet on the furniture like a heathen.  

It was easy for him to forget that this was Sonny.  

_His_  Sonny.  

The young man in the picture had an indifferent slope to his shoulders that his husband didn’t - Sonny stood strong and proud and determined, back straight and braced against the work he was doing.  It was only when he got home that he fully exhaled and crumpled, usually against Rafael and only ever when they were alone.  Rafael didn’t have to wonder about that, at least.  It was fairly obvious what had grown his backbone and every day was a reminder of what it took to maintain it.

Still, he looked at the image with fondness and felt an odd pulling in his chest at the sight of Sonny’s skinny frame and slouched shoulders.  He smiled, thinking about pressing a kiss to the pale column of his husband’s throat when he came home.

Rafael turned the page.


	3. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael muses on Sonny's colors.

 

Sonny looked marvelous in red.

It’s a shame he never wore it.

Once Rafael had lent him a scarf for a very brief undercover mission - one in which Sonny had to be a rich asshole trying to buy drugs - and Sonny had draped it around his neck as though it were a python waiting to strangle the life out of him.  Like the vibrant red had no place next to his pale skin or beautifully pink lips.  As though Rafael hadn’t reveled in the sight of it.  His clothing on Sonny, his smell lingering on Sonny’s neckline for the rest of the day.

He wasn’t sure when Sonny decided to avoid color but Rafael felt it was probably long-standing.  There was a chance he’d been born in muted colors - he probably only bought gray backpacks for school and had signed himself up for the only baseball team on Staten Island whose team colors were white and beige.  He couldn’t imagine a time in which Sonny had been able to wrap himself up in vivid shades of anything and wear them like they were made for him.

Except that wasn’t true, not with the photo in front of him.

Sonny wore the deep scarlet sweater well.  It was textured and loose around his neck, drawing attention to the shadows created at the hollow of his throat and the vague suggestion of stubble on his jaw.  It made his eyes look darker and earthier than the clear blue Rafael knew them to be.  He wasn’t sure who the hell cut Sonny’s hair - there was a good chance he’d done it himself, as he could see a younger version of his husband not bothering with such things - but it worked for the aesthetic of the photograph.

Messy.

Warm.

Bed-tousled, as though just pulling himself out from between those wheat-colored sheets.  Rafael had seen the real thing enough times that he recognized the honesty in the pose, particularly the slightly pouting lips and faint circles under his eyes.  He was willing to bet Sonny had been actually tired for this shoot and the photographer had just decided to use it.  Rafael’s protective instincts - meager as they were - instantly felt like insisting this younger version of his husband get some sleep.

His eyes may have briefly hung on Sonny’s long fingers, but he could hardly be blamed for that.  Not when he was intimately familiar with that they could do.

Rafael made a mental note to find that scarf again, if just to wrap it around Sonny’s neck and admire the flush that would inevitably creep up his neck.  Maybe he would use it to bind Sonny’s hands together at the head of their bed, just so he could admire the color on his skin and the shape of his fingers while they grasped at nothing.

Rafael turned the page.

 


	4. Brilliant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael muses on Sonny's mind.

 

 

When they first met, it took an embarrassing amount of time for Rafael to realize that Sonny was intelligent.

Not just that he had a brain, because that really was fairly obvious.  One doesn’t make it as far as Sonny has on looks alone, even if one did look like Sonny.  

No, it had taken an embarrassing amount of time for him to realize that Sonny was an intellectual.  He enjoyed thinking and reasoning and turning difficult problems over and over in his head until there was a new avenue to travel down.  A new solution.  It explained how he made detective so young.  It also explained how he got into law school working sixty- to seventy-hour weeks and still managed to pass the bar on the first attempt.

His husband was brilliant.

It was easy to see Sonny as a young intellectual in the photo in Rafael’s lap, dressed in a punk rock t-shirt.  This one looked candid, like it was snapped unexpectedly.  Shirt collar pulled out of shape, eyes squinting in the sun.  For a moment Rafael could see the gangly teen Sonny had once been, the awkward boy with a too-bright smile and a stash of library books in his backpack.  The only difference now was that Sonny kept them in their bookcase and not in his bag.

Rafael imagined he carried around a blank notebook for extraneous thoughts as they occurred to him throughout the day, maybe even some poetry although he’d probably rather die than admit it now.  In fact, Sonny still kept journals.  Not cohesive thoughts, the dates were approximations, but he had every book he’d ever filled since the academy.  Rafael had never looked through them, knowing it would be an invasion of privacy.  Frankly, he’d never had much interest.  

Until now, anyway.  

Until he was faced with the fact that maybe there were things he still didn’t know about the man he’d married.  Really, he should be annoyed, but the intrigue was too delicious for the irritation to stick.  Learning about Sonny had been one of the greatest endeavors of his life and it was pleasant for him to realize that he still had plenty of work left ahead of him.

Maybe he would ask about the journals when Sonny got home, he thought to himself as he studied his husband’s collarbones in that thin white t-shirt.  After he asked about the photo album, of course, but he was still enjoying himself too much.  He was too busy admiring the image to notice the key in the lock of their front door, or his husband stepping inside with a tired sigh.

Rafael turned the page.

“Hey,” Sonny said as he removed his jacket.  “What are you looking at?”


	5. Defiant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael is found out.

 

Rafael looked up, finally, and there he was.

The love of his life in a slim tailored suit and stark white shirt, looking gorgeous in the way that only Sonny Carisi could.  Slender and statuesque, pale skin and stark blue eyes.  Tall and willowy and so goddamn soft it hurt his chest if he looked at him too long.

Sadly, Sonny knew that look too well.

“You getting mushy on me, Raf?” he asked but looked like it delighted him.  “Did the wedding pictures come back already?  I wasn’t expecting them for another week.”

In answer he shook his head, choosing instead to hold the album he’d spent the evening admiring up for Sonny to see.  It was a picture of him reclined in a tall wooden chair, lean body stretched and one long leg bent at the knee.  Rafael loved it.  It was the slightly defiant set to his jaw, he thought.  A hint at the backbone Rafael had been thrilled to discover was there.  It was the five o’clock shadow at the flood of warm light behind him and his bare feet.  It was everything about him.  Everything about Sonny had always made him feel this odd mixture of aching and thrilled.  The picture he was holding only managed to bring that to the forefront.

His husband squinted, confused at the unfamiliar image, until realization slowly dawned and he grimaced.  His face heated and his eyes darted to the floor.  Rafael smirked because of course Sonny would be embarrassed by this kind of thing.

“Ah, jeez, Raf,” he groaned, rubbing a hand over his face so that it pinked up.  Either with the touch or with shame, Rafael had no idea.  “What did you have to dig that out for?  It’s ancient.  Bella made it for me as a joke.”

“I don’t think she was joking - a lot of care went into this.  I never knew you were a model,” Rafael said and managed to make himself sound irritated despite feeling the exact opposite.  “How many other moonlighting gigs do I have to worry about?  Did any of them involve dancing or spandex?”

Sonny looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor.

“No, obviously not.  Raf, it was a few years.  I was nineteen and some woman approached me on the street with a card and said it would be a way to pay for college,” he explained, hands on his hips.  “I figured it was basically free money.  Take some pictures of me wearing fancy clothes and I get out of school with no student debt?  It seemed like a no-brainer.”

“It was,” he agreed and patted the couch next to him.  Sonny paused, clearly smelling a trap that Rafael hadn’t bothered to set.  “Come here.  Tell me about them.  I like that this is something you’ve done.”

“You do?” he asked skeptically but walked around the coffee table anyway.  The couch dipped under his weight as he claimed a seat next to Rafael, crowding him, just the way he always did.  “You liked them?”

“Yes,” he replied simply, without even a hint of snark.  “You’re gorgeous, Sonny.  It’s oddly gratifying that someone other than me sees it.”

Sonny flushed and laughed, shaking his head.  

“I don’t care if other people find me attractive, Rafi,” he murmured, leaning to whisper the words into the crook of Rafael’s neck, “I care if you do.”

“You’re in luck,” Rafael said, wrapping an arm around his husband’s shoulders, “Because I can’t get enough of you.”

“You’re just saying that because I’m a model.”

Rafael scoffed, pretending to ignore the feel of Sonny’s lips on his neck.  There were still a few pictures left for him to study before he could follow those touches to their inevitable conclusion.

Rafael turned the page.


	6. Sonny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sonny comes home late to find a gift.

 

 

Sonny opens the door to their townhouse a few minutes past one in the morning.

The lights are low and the dishes have been put away and Sonny is thankful that Raf didn’t stay up for him.  He’d told him not to three hours earlier but sometimes the man did anyway, swearing he was working without ever having to admit that it was because he was worried.  Tonight their home was still and quiet, immaculate save for the labeled tupperware on the kitchen counter.  A fork sat on top of it and an unopened beer next to it, condensation still forming on the bottle - as far as Sonny was concerned it was a neon sign, beckoning him forward.  He hadn’t eaten in eleven hours and there was a chance he’d pass out soon.

He opened the beer first and took a long drink while he peeled the tupperware lid off.  Chicken alfredo, tossed with parmesan and extra garlic.  Sonny’s mouth watered pitifully and he dug in, biting back a satisfied groan at the first burst of flavor on this tongue.  He was so damn grateful he’d had the presence of mind to teach his husband cook all those years ago.  It was paying off in spades, and that didn’t even count the sexy, serious scowl Rafael wore like decoration when reading a recipe.

Not to mention the apron.

Sonny finished his dinner in less than five minutes, chasing each bite with a long pull from his bottle.  He was full and a little buzzy and there was a warm, solid body waiting for him to come to bed down the hallway.  Life was good.  Beer finished and dishes washed, Sonny’s thoughts turned to sleep before catching something in his periphery on their kitchen island - a book, he realized, when he turned to get a closer look.  No, not a book.  Bella’s picture album.  

It had been two weeks since Raf found it in those boxes; the ones from the very back of his closet, where he kept things that really could be thrown away but he was a sap and couldn’t stomach the thought of actually doing it.  Mostly Raf had left the subject alone once they’d gone through the pictures.  So far the only noticeable change was the fact that Raf’s old red scarf had made a sudden reappearance, having made a home on their nightstand since his husband had closed the book and turned into Sonny’s kiss like he’d been denying himself.

And here it was again, this time with a bookmark.  

That red scarf.

Sonny pulled it toward him and opened it to the place his husband had marked it.  He expected to see a photo Raf had particularly liked but the one on the page in front of him wasn’t familiar at all.  It also wasn’t from any of his photoshoots.  Nor was it old.

In the album’s final space there was a picture of him - him now, him older.  Probably in the last year or two.  Closer to two, judging by the amount of gel in his hair.  

Still, he looked… good.  He didn’t look like the kid in the rest of the book.  There were lines around his eyes and a serious set to his mouth that made him think this may have been taken while he was working.  His clothes were decent, thank God.  This was when Rafael had started enjoying an increased amount of influence in his wardrobe choices.  The gray suit made him look more tan and the deep blue brought out his eyes.  

“Huh,” he huffed quietly.  “Maybe I’ve still got it.”

“You’ve always had it.”

Sonny turned around to see his husband in the doorway, hair rumpled from sleep and cheeks flushed.  His thin cotton t-shirt betrayed the broad expanse of his chest as he folded his arms across it.  

If he could, he would devote an entire album to Rafael just like this - freshly awake, soft and alluring.

“You put this in here?” he asked quietly, despite the fact that he didn’t have to worry about waking him up anymore.  “Where did you get that picture?”

“I used my superior detective skills and used Google,” he snarked but Sonny knew it was full of affection.  “A paparazzi recognized you at a crime scene two years ago, apparently.  There was a little blurb in one magazine about what Dominick Carisi is doing now - you’re a hunky cop, in case you were wondering - and this picture was attached.”

“Hunky, huh?” he grinned and Raf rolled his eyes.  

“I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

“You don’t  _have_  to,” Sonny allowed, “But this picture and that scarf and that look in your eyes tell me you want to.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up and he left his place at the doorway to crowd close; hip to hip, chest to chest.  He wrapped gorgeous long fingers around Sonny’s tie and gently pulled him down for a kiss, lips brushing just enough for Sonny to get a taste of his toothpaste.  His stomach swooped low and his toes curled in his shoes.  It was both worrisome and thrilling that Rafael’s kisses could still do that to him.  He leaned in for another peck but Rafael had moved on, pressing a kiss just below his bottom lip.  Another to his chin.  A third to the underside of his jaw.

“You gonna take me to bed, Rafi?” he breathed, fisting his husband’s shirt between his fingers.  “Tell me how pretty I am?”

Rafael rolled his eyes.

“Only if you stop talking.”

Sonny laughed and Rafael let his tie go, turning to head back in the direction of their bedroom.  Sonny smiled, exhaustion temporarily fading, and loosened his tie.  He could already taste Rafi’s skin on his tongue.

“Bring the scarf,” Rafael called from the darkness and Sonny grinned.

He still had it, alright.  

 


End file.
